


Conclusion

by Shadow_of_Quill



Series: Resurrections [3]
Category: Death Note
Genre: Fix-Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-25
Updated: 2015-12-25
Packaged: 2018-05-09 03:17:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,183
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5523401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_of_Quill/pseuds/Shadow_of_Quill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you do with an apple?<br/><i>He rejected the answers.</i><br/>What do you do with a heart?<br/><i>Make sure it keeps beating.</i></p><p> </p><p>(Sequel to <a href="http://www.archiveofourown.org/works/5506124">Return</a>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Conclusion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/gifts), [WaltzQueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WaltzQueen/gifts), [mymindisblank](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mymindisblank/gifts).



> For everyone I made cry. Especially ChocoChips. Merry Christmas.

L couldn't quite believe it when he saw it, floating in the middle of Nothingness. He reached out with both hands, scared that he'd damage it (more than he already had), and carefully cradled it to his chest.

The object flickered: heart, apple, heart, apple, heart...

L frowned, worried. What was done with an apple?

_Eat it, or let it rot so the seeds can grow._

He shuddered at the thought, hunching protectively around it. No, that wasn't what he wanted for this. Those seeds - they wouldn't be who he wanted.

What was done with a heart?

_Make it beat._

It shuddered in his hands as if it heard the answer, and started beating hard, fast, a staccato of terror. He held it to his chest, whispering comforting sounds.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Light-kun. I didn't realise any of you was left, and I'm so sorry you died because of my mistake, I never meant to punish you, I thought I was just getting rid of the thing possessing you and I'm so sorry I was wrong, I'm sorry, Light, I'm sorry..."

The soft litany went on for what seems like hours.

He woke up with his hands cupped around a beating heart that no one else could see.

 

Light's heart floated by his own chest, beating steadily, not-quite-synced with his own heartbeat. He found himself reaching to touch it at odd moments, as if checking it was still there, despite feeling it every second.

He also started taking fewer cases, filling his time with watching the surveillance footage from the Kira case. Scene after scene of Light, Light arguing with him, Light playing the dutiful son, Light fighting him, Light doing his homework, Light working, Light eating, Light sleeping, Light, Light, Light, Light... At night he curled around Light's heart and whispered their past, what Light said, what he did, how he looked, how he acted.

Light's heart seemed to grow more solid by the day as he reminded it of who Light was, but the change was never quite obvious enough for L to be sure it was more than wishful thinking.

It might have been wishful thinking that he felt a spark of annoyance from Light when he turned down a case for not being interesting enough. It might have been his imagination insisting that Light wanted him to eat healthier, get some fresh air, sleep more.

He wasn't sure he was doing the right thing, until the day - months after he woke with Light's heart in his hands - that he found himself staring into a pair of indistinct brown eyes.

L choked on his tears.

 

It didn't take long for them to realise that the surveillance footage wasn't enough to bring Light back further. L's memories alone of Light weren't enough. They needed someone else who knew him.

L forced himself to go to Misa. Misa screeched, Misa wailed, and Misa readily spoke on and on of her precious Light-kun.

She never noticed him hovering by L's shoulder.

All her words left him just as unreal as he had been before.

Light wasn't surprised. _Come on, Ryuuzaki. She only knew the image of who she **wanted** me to be._

L worried at his thumbnail. Who else was there that those words wouldn't apply to?

Who else but him had anything to share of who Light really was?

 

"Matsuda."

The young cop looked torn between anger and worry as he saw L step out of the crowds. "What is it?" he hissed, looking around and trying to make sure no one was paying attention to them. "What do you want?"

"I want to hear what you remember of Light-kun outside of his possession."

Matsuda stared in disbelief into the opaque grey eyes, wanting to believe this was just a stupid joke. "Why?!"

"Because."

For a moment, Matsuda thought he could see Light staring at him with a dubious expression, thought he could hear him ask, _Are you sure he can help?_

"It seems it will be necessary."

"What do you want to hear?" Matsuda asked, eyes turning again and again to the spot where he thought he'd seen Light.

Light's voice seemed to echo with L's. _"Everything you can tell us."_

 

Matsuda didn't talk immediately. L was irritated. Light snorted at him. _How terrible; it looks like you're going to have to put some actual effort into bringing me back._

"Light-kun did not put this sort of effort into reviving me," L muttered rebelliously, disregarding the fact that Matsuda could hear him.

 _Getting people to talk wouldn't be an effort for me, would it?_ Light smirked.

Both of them jumped when Matsuda answered him. "No, it... it really wouldn't have been."

 _You can see me?_ Light asked, and the desperate hope echoed his last meeting with L too closely for L's composure but it didn't matter because neither of them noticed, Light too invested in being real to someone other than L, Matsuda too intent on Light being something more than a momentary illusion.

"Kind of? You sort of - fade in, for a few moments, and then you're gone again." Matsuda must have seen Light's face fall, because his next words were, "Sorry. I'll try harder."

 _Tell me who I was. Tell me who I was to you,_ Light begged, and for the next few hours L sat on the sidelines as Matsuda described the young man he'd come to know, the flaws that he admitted he'd brushed off when he saw them, the virtues that weren't all illusory. They learned how Light kept the team going without running them into the ground, held them together without crushing any of them. And then they learned other things - Light's reactions to minor day-to-day annoyances and triumphs, Light's idealism that had been so easily twisted to fanaticism, Light's pettiness that only Matsuda had been close enough to see and unimportant enough for Light to discard his mask around, even if only for a few seconds.

It tore at L to realise that Matsuda might have known Light better than he had - those hours filling in Light till he looked nearly solid, when L had spent months building him into the ghost that had walked beside him.

Light rolled his eyes at L.

_'Fine details aren't worth much without a framework to apply them to.'_

The words made L picture a skin, a film, of Light hovering over emptiness, ephemeral as soap-bubble scum. The thought made him cringe and take a mouthful of sweets to wash away the horrible taste it left.

"You still eat like that?" Matsuda protested.

 _'It'll take more than dying to change his eating patterns,'_ Light noted, curling his lip at L.

L pretended not to hear him.

Both of them wished Light was solid enough to snatch L's sweets away.

 

Matsuda brought Light closer, but it became clear after a few months that he wasn't enough, either.

 _"Who else is there? Yamamoto?"_ Light raged, insubstantial hands slamming through a wall.

"Oh. Oh!" Matsuda's face lit up in a way that said he had just had an epiphany. L and Light waited to see if it was something they hadn't already thought of for themselves. "What about your parents? They'd know you, right?"

Light stared at him, the hurt he'd never shown when he was alive plain to see on his ghostly face.

_"Matsuda. Name one thing my father ever did that showed he saw my real self instead of the son he wanted to see - the one that I **imitated** for him. And my mother paid less attention than he did."_

Light finished, and L wanted to hit Matsuda for making someone as proud as Light admit this to anyone else, _"They'd be as bad as Misa."_

"...Oh."

They were silent, each looking down and away.

Light slowly raised his head. _"But that... There **is** someone."_

"Really?" Matsuda looked hopeful. "Who?"

 _"Sayu."_ Light gave L a hard smile, challenge glinting in his eyes. _"Here's your challenge, L. You don't have to find your way out of the Underworld - you just have to get my sister to talk to us about me. With full honesty."_

L blinked at him. One finger crept up to his mouth. "...Would it be possible for me to choose leading us out of the Underworld as an alternative?"

Matsuda giggled. Light just looked unbearably smug, making L's feet itch to kick him. _"No."_

 

L's first attempt to talk to Sayu got a door slammed closed in his face. Light applauded her.

L's second attempt to talk to her got him his first restraining order from her. Light laughed.

L's fifth attempt to talk to her got him shot at. Light cringed away from the bullets, and spent the next few days refusing to talk to L, the next few nights with his hands pressed to L's chest to feel his heart beating.

L's ninth attempt to talk to her got far enough for him to explain that he wanted to hear the truth of what Light was like. Then it got him a personal demonstration of the hand-to-hand lessons Sayu had been having since her older brother's death, and a badly-sprained wrist and elbow.

 _"Are you trying to bring me back, or just entertaining me?"_ Light asked, shaking his head. _"Because you need to use more tact if it's the first. And if it's the second, I'd prefer you find a way that doesn't risk your health so much."_

L growled. This was personal, now. This girl had the information he needed, and he was _not_ going to let her keep it from him.

L's sixteenth attempt to talk to Sayu got him a frustrated stare that was far too similar to the one he'd become used to waking up to, and he couldn't quite keep himself from flinching. "Why does it matter anymore?" she demanded. "He's dead! And don't think I don't know, because I do - Tou-san told me - _you killed him!"_

The words felt worse than any punch Light had ever landed, sending L reeling.

 _"Yes, he did,"_ Light said gently, solemnly, addressing Sayu for the first time since his death, _"but he's also the one bringing me back."_

Sayu gasped, flinched back herself as her head flew up, eyes widening as they finally saw the phantom of her brother. "...Nii-san?" Her voice wobbled.

Light smiled, soft and pained. _"Hey."_ He closed his eyes for a moment. _"I just hope my interference won't invalidate this,"_ he murmured.

"So do we all," L murmured back.

 

Sayu told them about Light as a child, silly things, minor things. She told them how Light ruined her fifth birthday party because he thought it couldn't be important to her, and how he spent the money he'd been saving for a gaming system on a limited edition poster to make up for it. She told them how Light used to hand her the chocolates he got on Valentine's Day and then made her ask to go to really boring museums on family days out as payment. She told them half-remembered moments, like hearing Light being scolded for sleeping under his bed and his retort 'I need to see that there aren't any monsters there!' She told them about Light's response to a boy kissing her. She told them Light's response to one of her friends kissing _him._

They both listened intently. At first. Then Light started joining in, correcting her, adding details, and L had no idea what to make of it because Light never interfered with his or Matsuda's stories.

Then L noticed that Light was getting firmer.

Then L noticed that Light was looking more solid, more real, more _human,_ with every word that he shared with his sister.

Then L realised that, despite all his efforts, despite everything either of them had done to and for each other, in the end, he wasn't the one Light had really needed.

 

L woke up the next day to an empty room.

He told himself he wasn't surprised.

He told himself he wasn't hurt.

When he went to the kitchen, he found himself faced with the brand new sight of half-naked Light devouring every savoury item he could lay hands on.

Half-naked Light glared at him, swallowing to clear his mouth. _"First,_ we are buying reasonable groceries. I don't care how deeply you're deluded that you can survive on sugar alone. _Then_ we are buying me clothes. Decent clothes, that fit, and suit me. _Then,_ we are going to start working on that case you've been putting off because 'it's too boring', and so help me, if you try to -"

"You're staying?" L couldn't keep the hope from his voice.

Light stared at him. "You honestly think that after all _this_ I'm going to let you out on your own?"

For the first time since he executed Kira, the first time since he killed Light, the first time since he was told by a shinigami exactly what he'd done and exactly how unnecessary it had been - For the first time in far too long...

L smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone wondered, L has it wrong - again. It's not that he isn't the one Light needs, it's not even that he isn't the one Light needs _most_ \- it's that he isn't the _only_ one Light needs.


End file.
